I heard children from asian countries (especially Japan) find the first few years at school very easy as far as maths goes because their counting system goes
"zero one two three four five six seven eight nine"
then
"one-zero one-one one-two"...
ie, they only have to remember the first 10 numbers, while us English speakers have the first 10, then we get into "teens", then "twenties", then "hundreds" etc etc.

Can anyone from these countries or who speaks these languages confirm it?

Not sure about Japanese, but what you say is true for Mandarin Chinese.

05-06-2005

Hunter2

Quote:

I heard children from asian countries (especially Japan) find the first few years at school very easy as far as maths goes because their counting system goes
"zero one two three four five six seven eight nine"
then
"one-zero one-one one-two"...
ie, they only have to remember the first 10 numbers, while us English speakers have the first 10, then we get into "teens", then "twenties", then "hundreds" etc etc.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

05-12-2005

Queatrix

I understood what you said MW_PAUL_UK. Scarry thing!

05-12-2005

Lurker

One reason besides the sound differences in of might be the fact that quite a few languages get by without a word filling the space of "of" at all - it is a case, like in Latin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stovellp

I heard children from asian countries (especially Japan) find the first few years at school very easy as far as maths goes because their counting system goes
"zero one two three four five six seven eight nine"
then
"one-zero one-one one-two"...
ie, they only have to remember the first 10 numbers, while us English speakers have the first 10, then we get into "teens", then "twenties", then "hundreds" etc etc.

Can anyone from these countries or who speaks these languages confirm it?

Languages have many different ways of counting numbers. Japanese's system is essentially 0-10, then 10+1, 10+2 etc. At 20, it is (2 x 10), (2 x 10 + 1), etc. This pattern is continued for a while. This is because Japanese borrowed from Chinese.

My favorite (and the most complex IMHO) is in Nimbia, a dialect of Gwandara spoken in Nigeria. It is a duodecimal system, so it goes from 1-12 and then gets more complex. It goes 12 + 1, 12 + 2, until 24, which is (12 x 2), then (12 x 2 + 1), etc. 70 is "gume biyar ni gwom" (12 x 5 + 10). This continues up to 144 ("wo"), or "12 squared".

Hindi is similar to our counting system up to 100. I don't want to spend time going into it now, but here's an example: